Wireless Asia articles from May 2003

Wireless Asia archives from May 2003

The cost of mobile termination. (Unwired).
May 15, 2003... You may not have noticed but the global war on excessive mobile termination fees is well underway. In Europe, where it can cost up to 13 times more to deliver a mobile call compared with a fixed call, new EU-wide laws will come into effect on...

Channel trouble: Vodafone faces $56m damages bill. (News Analysis).(Vodafone Pacific Proprietary Ltd.)
May 15, 2003... Vodafone's Australian subsidiary is facing more litigation from disgruntled resellers if its appeal against a A$14.2 million ($8.6 million) judgement is unsuccessful. If the dealers win, damages against Australia's third largest mobile carrier...

Wi-Fi to dominate. (Insight: one month's wireless research).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... WLAN will establish itself as the dominant mobile infrastructure within five years at the expense of 3G, says a Metrinomics survey of its 300-member online IT panel. Nearly 90% of the panel believe that WLAN will be the infrastructure of...

Long climb for fixed SMS. (Insight: one month's wireless research).(short messaging services)(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Almost all fixed incumbent operators are moving to offer fixed line SMS, but the product faces an uphill battle to become a mass market product, Ovum says. Deutsche Telekom, SingTel, Belgacom, BT, Telecom Italia, China Telecom and Telekom...

More mobile minutes. (Insight: one month's wireless research).(cellphone vs. landline )(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... US mobile subscribers spend more time on their cellphones than on their landlines, logged an average 490 minutes of use (MOU) per month in the fourth quarter of 2002, according to a Yankee Group analysis. This compared with the landline...

US firms go for 802.11. (Insight: one month's wireless research).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Employees at US SMEs are more likely to be connected via 802.11 wireless LANs than staff at large corporations, says Jupiter Research. A recent Jupiter study found that 57% of US companies already support 802.11 networks, with an additional...

Mobile price wars return to Hong Kong. (News Analysis).
May 15, 2003... Hong Kong's ultra-competitive mobile market has found itself engaged once again in a fierce price war, after enjoying nearly a year of relative peace. This time the battlefield is shifting to the low-end segment, both post paid and...

Telecom Asia Awards to go ahead. (News Analysis).
May 15, 2003... Presentation of the Telecom Asia Awards will go ahead as scheduled in Singapore in June, despite the cancellation of the CommunicAsia event. CommunicAsia, Asia's biggest annual telecommunications exhibition, along with sister event...

cdma2000 1x: the efficient 3G solution. (Advertorial).
May 15, 2003... As 3G competition heats up, cdma2000 1x has stolen a march on rival cellular standards by delivering the highest market growth and the most cost-effective return on investment. With full backward capability and higher data throughput,...

KPN declines to provide a 150 million-pound ($238.7 million) loan. (Movements).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... KPN declines to provide a 150 million-pound ($238.7 million) loan to its British venture Hutchison 3G UK.

Five Asian cellcos--Hong Kong's CSL, Malaysia's Maxis, Singapore's MobileOne, Philippines' Smart and Australia's Telstra. (Movements).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Five Asian cellcos--Hong Kong's CSL, Malaysia's Maxis, Singapore's MobileOne, Philippines' Smart and Australia's Telstra--agree to form the Asia Mobility Initiative (AMI), teaming up to improve the range and coverage of their mobile services.

Sweden's Post and Telecoms Authority rejects a request from French mobile. (Movements).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Sweden's Post and Telecoms Authority rejects a request from French mobile operator Orange to transfer its Swedish 3G license to a subsidiary, GGG Licens, to help license holder Orange Sweden restructure.

NEC and Siemens complete the first stage of Hutchison 3G UK's network. (Movements).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... NEC and Siemens complete the first stage of Hutchison 3G UK's network. The two companies, which are supplying half of the 3G radio infrastructure required by 3 UK in contracts announced in April 2001, are implementing the Radio Access Network...

Ericsson will cut thousands more jobs as the market looked set to fall more sharply than previously expected. (Movements).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Ericsson will cut thousands more jobs as the market looked set to fall more sharply than previously expected. The news, which sends its shares soaring by almost 30%, follows Ericsson's tenth straight quarter in the red. The workforce will fall...

Sony Ericsson reports wider first quarter losses due to weaker sales and falling handset prices. (Movements).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Sony Ericsson reports wider first quarter losses due to weaker sales and falling handset prices. The company made a 113 million euro ($125 million) pre-tax loss in the January-March period, compared with a 77 million euro pre-tax loss in the...

Qualcomm posts a higher quarterly net profit and raises its full-year earnings for the second time. (Movements).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Qualcomm posts a higher quarterly net profit and raises its full-year earnings for the second time, due to the demand for tx equipment and phones in Korea and new 1x deployments, especially in China, India and Australia. Some analysts, however,...

Motorola will introduce almost 50% more new semiconductor products. (Movements).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Motorola will introduce almost 50% more new semiconductor products in 2003 compared with last year.

Nortel Networks announces net earnings of $54 million on revenues of $2.4 billion--its first profit in three years. (Movements).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Nortel Networks announces net earnings of $54 million on revenues of $2.4 billion--its first profit in three years and, according to CEO Frank Dunn, one quarter early. This compares with a loss of $841 million a year ago.

Lucent posted its 12th straight quarterly loss thanks to continued weak capital spending, but still beat the street. (Movements).(Lucent Technologies Inc.)(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Lucent posted its 12th straight quarterly loss thanks to continued weak capital spending, but still beat the street. Sales in the quarter fell 32% from last year to $2.40 billion, but were up from the previous quarter, while the gross profit...

Motorola completes its offer for 13.3 million Next Level shares after extending the deadline five times. (Movements).(Next Level Communications)(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Motorola completes its offer for 13.3 million Next Level shares after extending the deadline five times. As a result, Motorola has increased its ownership of Next Level stock to 88.7% from 74%. The company will acquire the remaining shares...

A federal judge in New York, acting upon a ruling from the US Court of Appeals, dismisses Motorola's racketeering case against the Uzan family, owners of Turkish cellco Telsim. (Movements).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... A federal judge in New York, acting upon a ruling from the US Court of Appeals, dismisses Motorola's racketeering case against the Uzan family, owners of Turkish cellco Telsim. However, Judge Ted Rakoff says the charges could be refiled later...

Beijing: China Unicom starts a new round of CDMA discounts and packages. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Beijing: China Unicom starts a new round of CDMA discounts and packages in a number of cities including Beijing, after the company posted disappointing monthly CDMA adds in the first quarter.

Beijing: China Netcom president Xi Guohua will swap jobs with MII vice minister Zhang Chunjiang. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Beijing: China Netcom president Xi Guohua will swap jobs with II vice minister Zhang Chunjiang. Under the new arrangement, Xi will be vice minister and Zhang Chunjiang will be the new president of Netcom, Reuters quotes an Mil spokesman as...

Hong Kong: Peoples Telephone plans to start a field trial of EDGE technology by the third quarter. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Hong Kong: Peoples Telephone plans to start a field trial of EDGE technology by the third quarter, with a commercial rollout scheduled by year-end, which would make it the first in Asia to launch a commercial EDGE network.

Hong Kong: Sunday Communications launches a service that lets customers know which nearby buildings have housed carriers of the deadly SARS virus. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Hong Kong: Sunday Communications launches a service that lets customers know which nearby buildings have housed carriers of the deadly SARS virus. It is also donating mobile services to SARS patients recovering in hospitals.

Dhaka: Bangladesh's four mobile operators will invest $2.69 million in state-owned fixed-line monopoly Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) in a bid to get access to its network. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Dhaka: Bangladesh's four mobile operators will invest $2.69 million in state-owned fixed-line monopoly Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) in a bid to get access to its network. The move is necessary as BTTB's interconnection...

Colombo: Sri Lanka will sell part of its GSM 1800 MHz spectrum to three mobile operators. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Colombo: Sri Lanka will sell part of its GSM 1800 MHz spectrum to three mobile operators, hoping to raise close to $3 million from the bids.

Islamabad: Pakistan Mobile Communications awards Motorola a $39 million contract to expand the operator's GSM network to 2 million subscribers. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Islamabad: Pakistan Mobile Communications awards Motorola a $39 million contract to expand the operator's GSM network to 2 million subscribers. The expanded network is expected to be deployed by mid-2003.

Kuala Lumpur: Telekom Malaysia spends around $41.9million to raise its stake in Celcom to 51.12%. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Kuala Lumpur: Telekom Malaysia spends around $41.9million to raise its stake in Celcom to 51.12%. The move comes a week after Telekom completed the sale of its mobile unit, TM Cellular, to Celcom.

Kuala Lumpur: Telekom Malaysia and Maxis Communications will launch pilot 3G services by as early as July, with plans to spend a combined 7.5 billion ringgit ($2.0 billion) on 3G over the next decade. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Kuala Lumpur: Telekom Malaysia and Maxis Communications will launch pilot 3G services by as early as July, with plans to spend a combined 7.5 billion ringgit ($2.0 billion) on 3G over the next decade. Separately, shareholders of Maxis approve a...

Seoul: The Ministry of Information and Communication conditionally approves SK Telecom's plan to absorb its 3G unit, paving the way for an early launch of W-CDMA. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Seoul: The Ministry of Information and Communication conditionally approves SK Telecom's plan to absorb its 3G unit, paving the way for an early launch of W-CDMA. The decision requires SK Telecom to receive a separate approval from the ministry...

Seoul: Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics halt deliveries of handsets to SK Global. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Seoul: Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics halt deliveries of handsets to SK Global, which is at the center of a $1.2 billion accounting scandal, due to fears the troubled trading firm may default on payments. SK Global distributes handsets...

Taipei: Chunghwa Telecom and Far EasTone are reportedly close to finalizing MMS interoperability. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Far EasTone Telecommunications Company Ltd.)(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Taipei: Chunghwa Telecom and Far Eastone are reportedly close to finalizing MMS interoperability, with launch of inter-network MMS at the end of May.

Tokyo: NTT DoCoMo agrees to a 200 million-pound ($315 million) shareholder's loan to Hutchison 3G UK. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Tokyo: NTT DoCoMo agrees to a 200 million-pound ($315 million) shareholder's Loan to Hutchison 3G UK. As part of the agreement, DoCoMo and Hutch will also cooperate on 3G in Britain and Hong Kong. At the same, DoCoMo forms another relationship...

Tokyo: NTT DoCoMo will launch three high-resolution megapixel handsets--the world's first of it's kind--in the next two months. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Tokyo: NTT DoCoMo will launch three high-resolution megapixel handsets--the world's first of its kind--in the next two months. The handsets, made by Fujitsu, Sharp and Sony Ericsson, will initially sell for more than 30,000 yen ($250)....

Singapore: Analysts expect SARS to boost revenues for mobile carrier M1 in the second quarter on the notion. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Mobile One)(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Singapore: Analysts expect SARS to boost revenues for mobile carrier M1 in the second quarter on the notion that customers would rather use mobiles to talk to each other rather than meet face-to-face.

Bangkok: Mobile operator Advanced Info Service (AIS) expects non-voice revenues to jump 72%-88% this year due to soaring demand. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Bangkok: Mobile operator Advanced Info Service (AIS) expects non-voice revenues to jump 72%-88% this year due to soaring demand. The company also expects to get bondholder approval this year to raise its dividend payment to as much as 70% of...

Sydney: Hutchison Telecom launches Australia's first W-CDMA network. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Sydney: Hutchison Telecom launches Australia's first W-CDMA network, initially in Sydney and Melbourne. which has earmarked A$3 billion i billion) to provide the service, will it to Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth year.

Sydney: Telstra says its underlying third quarter sales rose 2.6% and and reiterates guidance for flat revenues and pre-tax earnings for the year to June, 2003. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Sydney: Telstra says its underlying third quarter sales rose 2.6% and reiterates guidance for flat revenues and pre-tax earnings for the year to June, 2003. But it also warns that revenue from its Hong Kong unit CSL would drop in the fourth...

New Delhi: Bharti Tele-Ventures posts its first-level quarterly net profit since going public. (News map: around Wireless Asia).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... New Delhi: Bharti Tele-Ventures posts its first-ever quarterly net profit since going public. The company reported a consolidated net profit of 255.7 million rupees ($5.4 million) in January-March, while customer numbers have more than doubled...

Wi-Fi vs 3G: Friends or foes? Is WLAN going to deliver the death blow to 3G, or save its neck? Global technology editor John C. Tanner goes on the trail of the biggest debate in wireless and discovers that Wi-Fi is not as easy as it looks. .(Industry Overview)(Cover Story)
May 15, 2003... It's been almost two years now since the first reports on the emergence of the hot new trend of mobile data taking the telecoms industry by storm--wireless LAN, a.k.a. 802.11b, a.k.a. Wi-Fi, the IEEE technology that exploited the unlicensed 2.4...

Camera-phones just part of the picture: camera-phones may be hot, but they're just the opening at for MMS as it climbs the adoption curve. First, pricing and usability need to be solved. (Wireless Biz).
May 15, 2003... The camera-phone is the hottest product in the mobile market right now. With more than 20 million devices sold worldwide, and generating a good deal of mainstream press, it has a tinge of the 1990s boom to it. For sure, it's a sexy device...

Money and games on the wireless frontier: SK Telecom is one of the world's mobile data pioneers, with a 1x network delivering video and downloads, and with a W-CDMA system in prospect. Sung Kyun Park, vice president of the portal business division and portal planning team, talks to group editor Robert Clark about the wireless business. (1_2_1).(Interview)
May 15, 2003... Wireless Asia: You have two portals, June and Nate. What are their different roles? Sung Kyun Park: Basically Nate was born with 2G and 2.5G but June is a little more advanced and is a new brand, evolving from Nate. It is targeted for the...

Text-to-speech engine. (tools).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... SpeechWorks International has introduced ETI-Eloquence SF, a new embedded text-to-speech engine that offers voice output in 13 languages with a reduced memory footprint of less than 90KB per language. SpeechWorks says the ETI-Eloquence SF also...

Bluetooth source code. (tools).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... CSR (Cambridge Silicon Radio) is now providing customers with an extended version of its BlueCore Host Software (BCHS) for Bluetooth development called BCHS-HCI, which includes the source code for all layers down to the host controller...

Wireless accelerators. (tools).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Venturi Wireless has announced a new family of wireless accelerators that provide optimization solutions for mobile carriers and their enterprise customers. Venturi claims its compression technology can increase network speeds up to five times....

SSL VPN for PocketPC. (tools).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Aventail has announced what it claims is the first SSL VPN platform to support full application access on a PocketPC. The PocketPC support feature will now be a standard feature for its OnDemand Java SSL VPN agent and one of three access...

App traffic management. (deals).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Nokia and apps traffic management solution vendor F5 Networks have announced a new reseller agreement under which all of Nokia's business divisions will have access to F5's full suite of application traffic management products for resale in...

iiL gets game rights. (deals).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Mobile apps developer iiL has acquired the right from Japan's IndexCorp to re-engineer its game from the i-mode format to the GSM handset format. Separately, iiL also says it will launch around 100 games with different operators in Hong Kong,...

Nokia acquires Eizel. (deals).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Nokia will acquire Eizel Technologies, a privately held software company, in an all-stock deal valued at $21 million. Eizel develops server-based products that transform email messages, and Web content into formats easily accessible by mobile...

WorLd's highest SMS/MMS service. (deals).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... SOHU.com, China Mobile and Motorola will jointly provide SMS and MMS services at Mount Everest for 20 international teams that will climb the mountain this month to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first successful Mount Everest...

Message router deal. (deals).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... MobileOne (M1) has deployed Message Routers from First Hop that enables flexible carrier-grade routing of messages between diverse value-added services to different types of messaging centers regardless of make

Hands-free Xelibri driven by ART. (deals).(Advanced Research Technologies Inc. to work with Xelibri)(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... ART will work with Xelibri, the Siemens fashion accessory division to incorporate ART's smARTspeak NG voice recognition software for the flagship Xelibri 3. The first Xelibri devices will work in English, Italian, German, Chinese, Spanish and...

FOMA video. (out now).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... NTT DoCoMo launched its "M-Stage V-Live" videophone service this month for FOMA. V-Live, which was launched in October last year for PDA users, offers streamed and downloadable content via 64 kbps circuit-switched wireless connections. Users...

Tracking senior citizens. (out now).(Siemens ICM releases the "m.traction Senior Care Service")(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Siemens ICM has released the "m.traction Senior Care Service", a person locating system for GSM designed for retirement and nursing homes. The service helps staff track missing inhabitants or patients via a fabric ribbon that contains a TC35...

New Movie Mail 1x handset. (out now).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... KDDI and Okinawa Cellular have announced plans to launch the Movie Mail-compatible A5305K handset in mid-May of this year. The cdma2000 1x handset, manufactured by Kyocera, allows users to shoot and send movies. The A5305K is the seventh Movie...

Multiple phone books. (out now).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Bluefish Technologies has introduced a new SIM based application that provides users with the facility to have multiple phone books. Users can use a simple menu to switch between different phone books, as well as cut and paste entries between...

Take pop stars on karaoke dates. (out now).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Hong Kong cellco SmarTone has launched new mobile content for its "SmarTone in" portfolio, including Mobile Karaoke, which enables customers to sing karaoke via mobile phones, and Celebrity MMS, which lets customers design their own celebrity...

Still waiting for the real 3G. (Street Wise).
May 15, 2003... W-CDMA is finally here. From about a month ago, any Tom, Dick and Harry can now enter a "3" outlet in the UK, Italy and more recently Australia and walk out with a brand new 3G handset. While it was plagued by delays and technical problems,...

This month's new cellular acronym ... TSM. (Lynch).(Industry Overview)
May 15, 2003... I was rummaging around the TD-SCDMA Forum Web site the other week and came across an unfamiliar acronym. TSM. Surely some mistake, I thought. Maybe an incorrect rendering of GSM? But, no, the TD-SCDMA community have taken to using the term TSM...

Hands-free. (Shortmessage: around the wireless industry).
May 15, 2003... An Australian invention takes the hands-free concept to a new level. Professor Ashley Craig of the Sydney University of Technology, last month unveiled a prototype of the Mind Switch, which enables control of devices through measuring signals...

Stupid security tricks. (Shortmessage: around the wireless industry).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Privacy International has announced the winners of its competition for "the world's most pointless, intrusive and egregious security measures." One mobile operator made the cut--T-Mobile (UK), which took out the "Most Annoyingly Stupid Security...

Txt maniacs. (Shortmessage: around the wireless industry).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Australian teens send more text messages than they make actual phone calls, according to a Siemens mobile lifestyle poll Down Under. In a survey of more than 1,000 15 to 29-year-olds, 22% said they regularly flirted through SMS and 16% said...

Not drowning, dialing. (Shortmessage: around the wireless industry).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... It's getting harder to find a place where mobile phones don't work these days--so much so that just about the only place you could count on being coverage-free was underwater. Not any more. Divelink, a Canadian company that specializes in...

Breaking news in 140 characters or less. (Shortmessage: around the wireless industry).(Brief Article)
May 15, 2003... Arab news channel al-Jazeera has had a hard time establishing itself on the Internet, with both its Arabic and recently launched English Web sites having been brought down by US hackers and heavy traffic during the US-led war in Iraq. So...